Unique Snowflakes
by BlackRose
Summary: Does Harry's life as the Boy Who Lived, the golden boy of Hogwarts and the Wizarding World, sometimes seem too good to be believed? Maybe it is... *DEAD, kept for archive purposes.*
1. The Sleeper

**Unique Snowflakes  
by BlackRose, 2001**

Now for a warning. Or a challenge. Or something. >_< This is a deranged bunny that's been bugging me. It's writing itself... slowly, off and on. So apologies before hand for any delays in posting. I'm not the fastest writer. It is shounen-ai right now, and liable to be full on slash/yaoi by the time I'm done.

This is NOT a crossover! Nosiree... I'm not that nuts. ~_^ It's not even a parallel story. BUT... there is at least one quote from a certain movie in each chapter. Kudos to those of you who spot them, thus proving you're as deranged as I am. *g*

And a very heartfelt greatful "thank you" to all of the households and systems I've talked to, who were patient enough to answer my questions, though I'm sure none of them thought I'd do something this strange with the answers. Thank you!

Disclaimer: J K Rowlings owns these boys and girls and everything else, and does a lovely lovely job of it. I'm just amusing myself until the next book comes out. ^_^

**Chapter One - The Sleeper**

I sit in class and pretend to take notes, while in actuality the tip of my quill draws tiny circles upon my parchment in neverending spirals and my eyes are fixed on a head of unruly dark hair. He doesn't know, of course. That's the entire point of it.

It. This. Everything. All of us.

And he doesn't have a clue. Not a single blessed clue, and that's just the way it should be. Harry the innocent. Harry the foolish. Perfect Harry.

Harry Potter, the boy who lived.

There's something coming. We all know it, to some degree. Harry thinks he knows it. He thinks he knows what's coming. His battle. His fight. His war.

He doesn't know anything.

I do. I've known all along. Harry won't be fighting in any war - he _is_ the war. He's the prize. But for those of us who are on the field of battle, I sometimes wish...

If wishes were horses, I'd have a prize winning stable by now.

Enjoy your bliss, Harry. Enjoy it while you can. The war is coming, and it's only after you've lost everything that you will be free to do anything at all. 

We're all free, eventually. No one's exempt. Not even you, Harry.

  
  


He was in a foul mood by the time class ended, gathering up his things and stalking out without a word. Ron hurried after him, still shoving his books into his bag. "Harry! Harry, wait up!"

"What's wrong?" Hermione asked, a bit crossly. Outdistanced by the two boys' longer legs, she had to rush to catch up.

Harry reluctantly slowed, glancing behind them, but the corridor was full of black robed students disgorged from the classroom. He shook his head. "Malfoy," he answered shortly, the name said with distaste. "Did you see that?"

Ron snorted. "You mean him staring at you?" He mimicked the other boy's narrow eyed glare, earning him a cuff across the shoulder from Harry. "All through class. I swear, does he even blink?"

"The _entire_ class," Harry said disgustedly. "Bad enough with Snape glaring at us. Do we have to put up with it from Malfoy too?"

"Probably spoiling for a fight," Ron said. "I'd be happy to... if he gives me half a reason..."

"You'll what?" Hermione challenged. "Loose another handful of points from Gryffindor just so you can hit Malfoy in the face? I'm not saying he doesn't deserve it, but we can't afford it!"

"You worry to much," Ron shot back. "We've got the quidditch match against Slytherin next week - after that, we're home free, the House Cup is as good as ours. Right, Harry? Hey, that's probably what was bugging Malfoy. Maybe he's trying to put the evil eye on you before you get to wipe up the field with him."

Harry shrugged. "Yeah, right. Let him try." But the response lacked enthusiasm and he couldn't help glancing back once more as they headed for the stairs. There wasn't a pale shock of hair anywhere in sight.

  
  


Middle of the night. Anyone with half a brain is sound asleep. I should be. I bloody well should be.

He dreams, sometimes. He's a heavy sleeper - for him the world disappears when his eyes close and it doesn't come back until he opens them the next morning. Blissfully and perfectly asleep.

Except he's not. Blissful, that is. He dreams. He never remembers it, but he dreams at night. 

It always starts small. Little twitches, small hitches in the rhythm of his breathing. Then the movements, restless, tangling the blankets around his body. If it goes on long enough he'll start tossing, throwing himself around the bed, his hands clenching on sheets as he mouths silent words, struggling.

I've never seen his dreams. I don't think I'd want to.

He's moaning softly. The others are all asleep, Neville's soft snores sounding like something a cat would make curled up on warm blanket. The banked fire in the hearth is so low it's almost out, the barest flickers of orange light leaping around the mantle. 

He moans again, louder, the sound trailing off in a broken breath. I can hear him moving, turning from side to side.

Everyone's asleep. Except me. Because if he's dreaming, I can't sleep.

I slip quietly from my own nest of covers, hissing softly as the cold floor stings my bare feet. Grimacing, I creep across the intervening distance, reaching out to push back the heavy curtains the drape his bed.

He's curled in a ball, the covers a mess beneath his grasping hands. Shivering in his sleep with little distressed sounds muffled into his pillow.

I sink down gently onto the edge of the mattress. Reaching out, I brush my fingers across the disarrayed shock of his dark hair. "Shhh," I breathe, barely making a sound. "Shhh, Harry."

He quiets so easily at my touch, the tension draining away. In sleep he looks years younger. I wait until his breathing goes back to a slow, deep rhythm, letting my fingertips drift over his hair and cheek. He gives a little sigh when the dream breaks, turning over onto his back, one arm flung up around his pillow. Perfectly asleep.

Lucky him.

I sit beside him awhile longer, just listening to his breaths as he sleeps. Only when I find myself yawning do I pull myself away, padding back to my own bed and the covers that have grown cold in my absence. Sliding between the sheets, I pull the comforter across the top of my head, tucking myself into a faintly shivering ball until everything warms up again. Sighing, I lay my head down on my pillow, shutting my eyes and straining to hear those quiet steady breaths.


	2. Restless

**Unique Snowflakes  
  
Chapter 2 - Restless**  
  
  
  


> He was going to go insane.  
  
It was an insidious type of insanity, like an itch that he couldn't scratch, a scratch that wouldn't heal. A splinter, somewhere, that he couldn't quite pluck free.  
  
A glimpse of icy pale hair atop a pale face, seen for an instant in the hallway and then lost again.  
  
The feel of hard pale eyes on the back of his neck in the dining hall, until his muscles twitched with the effort not to turn around.  
  
A shoulder brushing against his in the bustle from one class to the next, nothing uncommon, but the lingering scent of spiced soap and cool darkness were always the same.  
  
It was infuriating. It was stalking. And it had been going on for weeks.  
  
"Oh, Harry," Hermione had sighed. "You totally showed him up at the quidditch match. He's just looking for an excuse to get you in trouble."  
  
"It started before the quidditch match," Harry had protested.  
  
Surprisingly, even Ron had seemed unconcerned. "He's just trying to get one up on you, Harry," he'd said over dinner one night. "He's being an ass. Ignore him."  
  
Easier said then done, and Harry was loosing patience.  
  
Joint potions with the Slytherins and Harry couldn't seem to do anything right. His bubbotuber pus spilled. His frog spleen was chopped all wrong. The contents of his cauldron positively refused to boil and no matter what he did the liquid wasn't about to turn the bright golden yellow it was supposed to be, staying instead a sickly orangeish green. Snape had finally walked away in disgust.  
  
And through it all those eyes had been on him, burning into his back relentlessly.  
  
Enough was enough.  
  
He had cleaned up hastily, ducking out of the class the minute it was up before Snape could issue any penalties for his failure. And he was there, at the top of the stairs, waiting when that head of pale hair came into sight, mercifully unaccompanied by it's usualy flanking bodyguards.  
  
Draco only looked vaguely surprised when Harry grabbed at his sleeve, jerking him out of the way against the corridor wall. "Something I can do for you, Potter?" he drawled.  
  
"Yes," Harry spat. "Tell me what the hell game you're playing."  
  
Draco looked pointedly down at where Harry's hand was still gripping his sleeve. "Tag?" he guessed lightly.  
  
Another group of students was coming up the stairs and Harry released him abruptly, dropping his voice. "You know damn well what I mean," he hissed. "You've been doing it for weeks. In the dining hall..."  
  
"Well, I do have to eat," Draco interrupted wryly. Harry ignored him.  
  
"In class, in the halls..."  
  
"Yes, I've been in all those places," Draco replied smoothly, in a tone that said he was humoring his rival. "Just like I always am, just like every student is. Anything wrong with that?"  
  
"When you're stalking me, yes, there is!" Harry snapped.  
  
Draco pursed his lips. "Stalking you," he repeated, disbelieving. "Really, Potter, you've got the most inflated ego. Believing your own publicity now? Why in hell would I bother stalking you?"  
  
"You tell me," Harry demanded.  
  
There was the faintest pause and then Draco shrugged. "Alright," he agreed mildly, making Harry gape at his sudden capitulation. "If you really want to know."  
  
Harry couldn't get his floundering mind to make any words to reply to that. Draco took advantage of his surprise and leaned forward, his whisper falling quietly into the bare space between them, as hissing and venemous as the words of any snake. "I'm *not* stalking you. I wouldn't bother. Why should I? You may be bloody Harry Potter, but you're nobody special. You're nothing. And I don't waste time on nothings. I've got better things to do."  
  
The anger dropped, hot and cold, into the pit of his stomach. "Liar," Harry whispered back, the word frigid on his lips.   
  
Draco drew away, his smile sardonic. "It'd take one to know one, wouldn't it?"  
  
A heartbeat went by, Harry staring as Draco looked calmly back. "You're insane," Harry hissed at last.  
  
Draco tilted his head, a small faded smile touching his lips in an expression that somehow seemed less mocking then before. "No," he said quietly. "I think you'll find that *you're* insane."  
  
The moment, whatever it was, was gone in the next heartbeat. Smug grin firmly in place, Draco shouldered his book bag. "Now, if you'll excuse me from your delusions of grandeur, *some* of us don't want to be late to class," he announced, and swept away.  
  
But his shoulder brushed Harry's as he turned, leaving the scent of dark spice behind him to cling like faded perfume in the folds of the other boy's robe.  
  
  
  
-------- Ron --------  
  
He talked to Malfoy, and now he's upset.  
  
He didn't say anything about it. He doesn't have to. It's written all over him, from the scowling glare as he sits staring at the same page of the same chapter of the same book for the second hour in a row to the way he's twisting his quill until the nib is about to break off. He's sulking and simmering until he's about to blow up.  
  
I eeke out another sentance on the report I'm working on, but it only adds two more lines and no matter how big I write it's nowhere near long enough. Harry's only got a few notes scratched out on scrap parchment - we're going to be at this all evening. I turn a page in my textbook, looking for any more material to add. "Malfoy still being an ass?" I ask mildly.  
  
Harry starts, nearly knocking his ink well over. "How'd you know?"  
  
"Weasley intuition," I tell him. "I'm gonna guess you didn't beat him into a pulp inbetween classes - you wouldn't be wound so tight if you had. And we'd be celebrating instead of doing homework."  
  
He grimaces. His emotions are all over his face, all the time - it makes him an awful chess player. "I asked him what he thought he was doing."  
  
"And?"  
  
He tosses his quill down angrily, the feathery end all bent out of shape from his fidgeting. "And nothing," he snapes. "He didn't say anything."  
  
I put my own quill down. Propping my chin in my hand, I just look at him. Harry glares back but I keep looking and after a few minutes he starts glancing away, fidgeting.  
  
"And you *expected* him to?" I ask wryly. "Harry, this is *Malfoy* we're talking about."  
  
He looks sheepish. "I know. Alright." He sighs testily. "Look, when did you start sounding like Hermione?"  
  
I shake my head. "No. Hermione would tell you to leave him alone. My advice? You should have just hit him."  
  
A grudging smile starts to make an appearance. "You're probably right. I'd feel better. He'd feel worse. I'll remember that next time."  
  
"Good." I sigh, picking my quill back up and glaring at my scroll. "Come on. These reports are due tomorrow... we'll be here working on them all night at this rate!"  
  
-------- Draco --------  
  
He's restless. It shows. Not just in the shadows under his eyes at breakfast or the way his hair is more rumpled then usual or the temper that's starting to flare.  
  
No. It's not just lost sleep.  
  
He's really restless. It crackles off him like a static charge and every time I'm near him I can feel it.  
  
He's starting to get the feeling that maybe there's something he doesn't know. But he doesn't know what it is, and he doesn't know where to start looking.  
  
Hush little baby, don't say a word...  
  
The sleeper can sleep a little longer. Just a bit.  
  
Stop trying to control your life and just. Let. Go.  
  
Slide.  
  
  
  
  
  
_Quote from last chapter  
"It's only when you've lost everything that you're free to do anything." -- Tyler Durden, Fight Club_  
  



	3. Slide

**Unique Snowflakes   
  
Chapter 3 - Slide**   
  
----- Ron -----  
  
With insomnia, nothing is real. Especially when it's someone else's insomnia.   
  
Maybe 'insomnia' isn't quite the word I'm looking for. Harry's sleeping, he's just sleeping badly. He's turned restless tossing into an art form, up one side of the bed and down the other in a tangle of sheets and flailing limbs. And if he doesn't sleep well, I don't sleep at all. Just the way it is and I don't have to like it.  
  
Harry looks like lukewarm death at the breakfast table and I was too chicken to glance in the mirror at the circles under my own eyes. Even Hermione looks tired, with a textbook open in front of her and her quill scrawling over parchement as she holds her toast with the other hand. Hermione, up all night doing homework. Imagine that.  
  
Someone ruffles my hair in passing and I glance up at Fred's smiling face. Or maybe it's George. Hell. It's too early to deal with my brothers, but I summon a wry smile.  
  
"You look like hell," one of the twins state bluntly as they descend on the table across from us. "Didn't you sleep?"  
  
"Not very well," I lie. Or not at all.  
  
Harry's been staring at a bite of sausage on his fork for the last several minutes in a bleary eyed daze. "Me neither," he mutters, setting the bite aside.  
  
"What's sleep?" Hermione asks distractedly. She reaches for the jam without looking and her hand would have ended up in the biscuit gravy if one of the twins - George? - hadn't moved it out of the way.  
  
The other twin - Fred? They've got different freckle patterns, I should know this but I'm too tired to focus - reaches across the table to flip up the cover of her textbook, ignoring Hermione's squawk of protest. "Arithmancy? Ugh. You should have asked us..."  
  
"...we would have told you not to take it," George finishes. "Beastly subject. All those forumlas..."  
  
"...lines and lines of them..."  
  
"...checking and rechecking just because you transposed one number somewhere, but it's two feet of scroll back up the problem..."  
  
"...and why does anyone need it, anyways?"  
  
Hermione humphes, pushing a tangle of hair out of her eyes. "It's a very fascinating subject. I like it."  
  
Fred catches my eye and grimaces. "Percy liked it," he said, as though that summed up all that needed saying right there.  
  
I shake my head. "you won't catch me taking it, that's for sure. Divinations is bad enough."  
  
Harry groans softly. "Are those predictions due today?"   
  
I wave a hand. "Just make something up." Hermione turns to glare at me.  
  
"Ron!"  
  
"What?" I demand. "Everybody does. That's all the class is good for!"  
  
"At least we don't have anything with Slytherin today," Harry mutters darkly as he pushed eggs around on his plate. I can only agree with him.   
  
  
  
----- Draco -----  
  
I eat mechanically, not really tasting any of it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, and it might as well be for all that I'm tasting it. There's no point to it, not really, no more so than to anything else. My eyes aren't on my plate. They're on a shock of rumpled black hair across the dining hall, one that's been nodding time and again throughout the meal.  
  
That old saying about how you always hurt the one you love. Well, it works both ways, doesn't it? And sometimes I can feel it, like a sore beneath my ribs, a spot of wasting cancer eating into my organs.   
  
An emptiness, and there's only one way to fill it.  
  
I'm so intent on watching as I eat that I don't notice I'm being careless until the knife in my hand slips. I wince, dropping it with a clatter, blood welling up wetly from the shallow cut along my fingertip. Automatic instinct puts the abused digit in my mouth, the taste of it salty and metallic and familiar. I swallow and drop my hand to examine the cut.  
  
Blood and saliva on skin, mixed in thin tendrils of curling red and for one instant I glimpse a question within the shapes of it, playing in flickers along my mind's eye.   
  
*Why?*  
  
It startles a sound from me, half laugh. Why? Because.   
  
Because I want to destroy something beautiful.  
  
Something innocent.  
  
I want to stop feeling empty.   
  
  
  
----- Harry -----   
  
He was more asleep then awake, the heavy fumes of incense in the warm air of the classroom making him drowse. Dimly, in snatches, he could hear the voices around him; dull droning sounds, like a distant bee hive, lost in the curling whisps of smoke.   
  
Ron's elbow found his ribs, jerking Harry awake again. Blinking, he straightened up, rubbing at aching eyes. "Ball gazing time," Ron muttered out of the corner of his mouth. Harry groaned.   
  
"Oh god... I'm not awake enough to invent something," he whispered back, trying to bring his scattered mind back together.   
  
Ron snorted quietly. "Then don't. Tell her the ball is broken or something. Tell her you've got a headache. Tell her you're seeing your bed... maybe she'll send you off to get some sleep."   
  
"I wish," Harry growled and then Trelany was calling his name and he stifled another groan, struggling to his feet.   
  
The crystal ball hadn't changed. Didn't change. Big and clear and brightly polished, it sat on the table and gleamed at him as he glared at it. But Trelany was waiting, eyes bright as she watched, so he obediently bent over the ball and looked into it.   
  
"That's it, Harry," Trelany was saying, "just relax..." and in an odd way her voice was relaxing, languid and slow, reminding him of the distant drone as he'd been dozing and his eyes were so heavy, tired and strained...   
  
One of the reflected shadows in the ball moved, shifting, twisting up like the curls of smoke rising from the incense brazier. And as he watched for one moment the shadow raised a spade shaped head, looking at him with chips of crystal eyes in a bright, unblinking gaze.   
  
"Sssslide," it hissed softly.   
  
"Harry?" Trelany's voice brought him back to himself. Dozing. He'd been dozing while he was standing there, his eyes open and his mind fast asleep. Trelany was beaming. "There you go, Harry, very good, come back to us. Just tell us what you saw."   
  
Harry shook his head. He hadn't seen anything not inspired by too little sleep and whatever incense Trelany was burning. He opened his mouth to reply that he hadn't seen anything, too tired to make up something fantastical to suit her. To his surprise he heard his own voice, with the odd dream snake's word on his lips. "Slide?"   
  
Silence for a moment, the class startled and Trelany just staring at him, the color slowly bleaching from her face. "Professor?" he asked. "Ah... I mean... I'm sorry..."   
  
"Thank you, Harry," Trelany interrupted abruptly, her voice distant and strained. "Ah... yes, thank you. You can go back to your seat, now." She cleared her throat, the bangles at her wrists chiming as she clasped her hands sharply in front of her, her knuckles stark and white. "Yes, well... I think that's enough crystal ball today. If you'll all take out your astrology texts..."   
  
  
  
_Quotes from last chapter  
  
Narrator: You're insane.  
Tyler: No, I think you'll find that you're insane.  
  
Tyler: Stop trying to control your life and just let go.  
  
Penguin totem animal: Slide!  
  
-- Fight Club_


	4. Wheels in Motion

**Unique Snowflakes  
by BlackRose, 2001**  
[BlackRose's Page][1]

Chapter 4 - Wheels in Motion  
  
  
  


> ----- Draco -----  
  
He finds me in the hallway after classes, his shoulder against mine 'accidentally' slamming me back against one wall. He's so furious his face is flushed almost as bright as his hair and his fists clench in handfuls of my robe as he tries to shake me. "Goddammit, Malfoy!"   
  
I shove him back, pulling free and smoothing my robe back down. We've played these little games too often. "Something wrong, Weasley?" I ask. Oh yes, yes indeed, and the thrill of it sends a warmth down my spine in bright tingles; something wrong enough to call out the watchdog, with Potter and Granger nowhere in sight.   
  
"Don't even try to make like you don't know," he hisses, voice dropping. "If you didn't do it, then you know who did. What's going on?"   
  
I shrug carelessly. "Nothing. Classes. Paranoia getting the better of you, Weasley?"   
  
He clenches his fist, shaking, a hair's breath from throwing himself at me again. "What the *hell* are you doing to Harry?"   
  
"Nothing," I repeat with a sniff. "Not a single bloody thing to your precious Potter. Go away, Weasley. Take your delusions somewhere else."   
  
Verbal roundabouts, and the sight of both of us bristling in the middle of the hallway must be so familiar that nobody comments. Weasley is stiff and angry, but he knows how far to take it. He's learned some restraint over the years. "Keep away from him," he snaps and the promise of retribution in his eyes is all too real. He holds my gaze for another moment, then spins away.   
  
He's learned restraint, but not when to think. I reach out and grab the strap of his book bag when he turns away, jerking him to a halt. He swings on me, all hot fury, a wild blow I catch across my free arm, his knuckles grazing my shoulder.   
  
"Idiot - would you just listen?" I hiss in a soft undertone. "Just listen to me for a minute!"   
  
"We've all listened to enough from you, Malfoy," he spits back. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"   
  
His second blow catches me by surprise - not a proper punch at all, just an open handed slap across my cheek, setting my ear to ringing with the sound of it and bringing a stinging flush to my skin. I gasp, letting him go.   
  
He stays where he is, obviously spoiling for a fight. I wince and work my jaw for a minute - he's got a strong arm. "I suppose I deserved that."   
  
"Damn right you do," he replies, but the sparks are dying down now. He jerks his book bag back onto his shoulder roughly. "Just stay away from Harry, dammit. Or I *will* beat you into next week."   
  
"You wish," I mutter. "I'm trying to help!"   
  
"Funny way of showing it," he shoots back. "Why would you help, anyways? What's in it for you?"   
  
"Damn it, Weasley..." I hiss through clenched teeth, "this isn't about anyone, it's about all of us. And 'ALL' of us includes me, in case you didn't notice!"   
  
He makes a scoffing noise. "Oh, imagine that. Draco Malfoy, out to save his own skin. Just call me our complete lack of surprise."   
  
"All of us," I repeat stubbornly.   
  
"You mean *you*," he snaps, jabbing a finger at me. "Leave off, Malfoy."   
  
"I meant what I said," I reply. He's like a bulldog with a clenched jaw that just won't let go. "Where's your friend Granger, Weasley?"   
  
"Leave her out of this!" he demands, reaching out to shove me again.   
  
"Like hell." I push him away once more, holding him at arm's length. "Granger's the brains behind you lot. You want answers? Go see her, and quit bothering me."   
  
He blinks at me, startled. "You heard me," I tell him quietly, my voice just between him and I. "You want to protect your golden boy? Go talk to Granger." I pull away and leave him there, mouth open, in the midst of the hallway. There's a tightness in my chest, just under my pounding heart. I don't look back.   
  
  
  
----- Harry -----  
  
Harry glanced up from his plate as Ron slid into the seat beside him, breathless and flushed. "I kept your spot," he pointed out, hastily licking a smear of gravy from his lip. "Did you get that paper turned in?"   
  
Ron blinked at him for a moment, then nodded, breath blowing out in a rush. "Oh... yeah, I did, no problem." Dinner was already on the tables and the other boy reached automatically, hands filling his plate from the platters near him as he looked around distractedly. "Where's Hermione?"   
  
"Library," Harry said around a mouthful of mashed potatos. "She said she had an extra credit report to do for History." He rolled his eyes. "As though she needs it. I promised I'd bring her a plate." Ron just waved slightly, his mouth full.   
  
"Quidditch practice tonight," Harry reminded him. "You gonna come out and watch?"   
  
Ron swallowed hastily, coughing a little. "Can't," he said. "That report for Dark Arts... I'm not done with it yet."   
  
Harry made a face. "I thought you finished that."   
  
"Not quite." Ron grabbed his drink, washing down the bite he had half inhaled. "I'll go to the library, see if I can get Hermione to help me. Bring her that plate. Meet you back at the tower after practice?"   
  
"Sure," Harry said mildly. "Fred, George... could one of you pass the gravy?"   
  
  
  
----- Ron -----  
  
It's dim in the library, and musty, and I feel like an ass standing there. I don't have any business here. It's stupid.   
  
Malfoy. Damn it. I should have just pounded his face into the wall and been done with it. Smirking little bastard.   
  
But he *never* has anything nice to say about Hermione - him sending me to her, like an admission that she might know something he doesn't... all of this stinks, it stinks to high heaven and I'm so tired I can't think straight any more.   
  
I find her tucked into a corner, books piled high around her table. She looks up at me, startled. "Ron? Where's Harry?"   
  
"Quidditch practice," I remind her. I pull a wrapped package out of my pocket. "Brought you a sandwich."   
  
"Oh, you're a life saver," she says, pushing papers out of the way to set it on the table. "I'm starving."   
  
I just shake my head and glance at the piles of books. "All this for extra credit?"   
  
She pauses in the act of taking a bite. I could be wrong - it's too dim to really tell, and shouldn't she have more light for studying? - but I think she flushes a little, the color spilling across her cheeks. "It's late," she mumbles under her breath, then takes a vicious bite of the sandwich as though it's to blame.   
  
Late? Hermione, late with *any* assignment?   
  
Hermione is watching me, her mouth full. Her face is pale, too pale, and the shadows under her eyes make her look older then her years. Worn and thin. She's lost weight, her cheekbones are sharper, and I hadn't ever noticed. Why hadn't I noticed? She looks ill.   
  
I glance down, looking at her notes and scrolls and for one moment it's like deja vu... formulas and figures and reams of words written in the thin, uniform lines of an automated pen, marching neatly across pre-ruled white paper; I blink and it's gone. Only scrolls and parchment and Hermione's flowing cursive.   
  
/Go see Granger,/ Malfoy had said. And here Hermione was, wane and pale and small looking, half buried behind a work load nobody should try to shoulder, because she was too smart and too stubborn for her own good. As though Malfoy would care.   
  
Hermione swallows, clearing her mouth. "Ron? Are you alright?"   
  
"Yeah," I hear myself say distantly. "Um... is there anything I can help you with?" I gesture vaguely around at the stacks of books.   
  
She shakes her head. "No." She takes a deep breath, running a hand through her hair. "I'll get it done." She doesn't sound as confident as she should. She sounds more tired then I am.   
  
"We'll be back at the tower," I tell her.   
  
She's already bent over a book, sandwich in one hand as she scrawls notes with the other. "Don't wait up," she calls after me. "I don't know how late I'll be."   
  
I turn to go, but find myself pausing and turning back. "Hermione," I call, and she glances up again. "If you need anything..." I trail off, unsure.   
  
She waves me away. "Go on, Ron," she says tiredly. "I've got work to do."   
  
Hermione always has work to do. Always.   
  
/Go see Granger./   
  
But Malfoy's a fool. There's got to be a better answer. There's got to be. But when the library door closes behind me and I slam my fist into the hard stones of the wall, scraping the skin off one knuckle, I have to admit that I don't know what the answer is. Just that there has to be one.   
  
  
  
_Quotes from last chapter:  
  
Narrator: With insomnia, nothing is real.  
  
Narrator: I want to destroy something beautiful.   
  
Penguin totem animal: Slide!  
  
-- Fight Club_  
  
  
  


   [1]: http://www.digitalmidnight.net



	5. Dreamscapes and Nightmares

**Unique Snowflakes  
by BlackRose, 2001**  
[BlackRose's Page][1]

Chapter 5 - Dreamscapes and Nightmares  
  
  
  
  
  


> ----- Harry -----  
  
He was dreaming.   
  
In the hazy, insubstantial way of dreams he found himself in school. Not the familiar stone walls of Hogwarts but in his old school - peeling plaster walls and dirty tiled floor, full of tired faces in muggles clothes with bookbags and binders. Harry drifted among them like a ghost, his Hogwarts robes whispering, but it might have been his invisibility cloak for all anyone noticed him. They brushed past him in a sea of oblivious eyes as he struggled, looking... but he didn't know for what, he only knew he had to find it soon.   
  
The hall faded and he was in an empty classroom. A huddle of bright coppery hair and wild brown curls was in one corner and Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Hermione! Fred, George!"   
  
But it was still wrong, Hermione in the skirt and jacket uniform of a proper English school, a muggle school, her arms full of books with titles about biology and calculus. They couldn't seem to hear him and Hermione was arguing with the twins - "No, *I'll* keep arithmancy, you can have history of magic, it's every tuesday and thursday..."   
  
"But Quidditch practice is thursday," George was protesting, and in his hands was a soccer ball.   
  
"Oh, this is so complicated," Hermione said fretfully.   
  
Then the scene shifted again and now it was Hogwarts, the Dungeon, and double potions with the Slytherins. Hermione, looking just like she should, was tugging on his sleeve and hissing. "Harry! Don't drift off in class!"   
  
"Sorry, Hermione," he started to say, but Ron was handing him a stack of books.   
  
"Here," Ron said. "Take one and pass it on."   
  
Harry found himself holding a stack of chemistry books. He took the topmost copy and passed the stack to Hermione, but Hermione was gone and Draco was sitting in her place, his pale eyes meeting Harry's as he took the books.   
  
"More table of elements, I guess," Draco remarked mildly. "Do you really think every snowflake is unique? Maybe Professor Snape will let us brew a snowstorm and find out."   
  
"Harry!" Ron's voice, and the room was shaking - did they have earthquakes in Scotland? "Harry... Harry!"   
  
"Wha-?" Harry came awake with a jolt, blinking. Ron was above him, the other boy's face pale and indistinct in the darkness of their dorm.   
  
"You alright?" Ron whispered. "You were dreaming."   
  
"I'll say," Harry gasped, rubbing at his eyes. "That was just weird... I was back in muggle school. Only Hermione was there..."   
  
"Muggle school? Ugh. Sounds more like a nightmare." Ron yawned largely. "You were tossing around."   
  
"Oh... Did I wake you? I'm sorry."   
  
"No, I wasn't asleep yet." Ron yawned again, scrubbing a hand over one cheek.   
  
"Right," Harry said disbelieving. "Well, you're mostly asleep now. I'm alright. Go back to bed."   
  
"Yeah, okay." Ron slid from the edge of the bed but Harry, reaching out, caught his wrist.   
  
"Ron?"   
  
"What is it, Harry?"   
  
Their whispers were quiet in the dark, muffled. Harry hesitated, then briefly squeezed Ron's wrist. "Thanks. Sorry about waking you."   
  
Ron squeezed back, his palm warm. "No problem. Just get some sleep."   
  
  
  
----- Ron -----   
  
Morning. *Early* morning, and all of us yawning and shivering out on the wet grass with the damn Slytherins. I hate care of magical creatures.   
  
Well, no, I like Hagrid. I really do. But the class I could do without, and the Slytherins I could *really* do without.   
  
My eyes feel like hot coals burning into my head. Can a person die from insomnia?   
  
Hermione's so tired her head keeps dipping towards Neville's shoulder, her eyes sort of glassy and half asleep. If I glance over even Draco, damn him, looks tired, with dark circles under his eyes and using Crabbe like a human wall to lean against. Is anybody in this entire school sleeping?   
  
Alright, *Neville* looks like he's awake, but I'm not sure that counts. Neville could sleep through an attack by You-Know-Who.   
  
Harry pokes at me, finger digging in my ribs. I jerk myself up again and he flashes me a wry smile. "Thanks," I whisper back, and try to look like I'm not only alert but attentive.   
  
  
  
----- Draco -----   
  
They're like sheep, set to pasture and content to graze. They stand there, dazed and glassy eyed, shellshocked survivors of restless nights but in the daylight the momentum fades and they are sheep again.   
  
I'm a wolf, not a shepherd.   
  
Would they be such content little sheep if the Dark Mark was hovering over the ruined smouldering wreck of their homes and families? I don't think so. There's a bite there, hidden beneath the layers of quiet complacency. There's fangs and real spirit, if you dig far enough. It's the digging that's tiresome.   
  
Weasley's eyes on me are hard and angry. I ignore him. If he can't see what's in front of his face, then I don't have the time. We are defined by the choices we make - if this is his, then so be it. I don't have time for sheep or guard dogs.   
  
Beside him, the morning sunlight glints off of glass lenses beneath the tumbled fall of dark hair. I think we've dreamt long enough, now, Harry. Time to stop playing. This won't wait much longer.   
  
  
  
_Quotes from last chapter:  
  
Narrator: I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.  
  
-- Fight Club_   
  
  
  


   [1]: http://www.digitalmidnight.net



	6. The Waking Time

**Unique Snowflakes by BlackRose, 2001**  
[BlackRose's Page][1]  
  
We are now entering the part known as "main plot"... wheeee! ^_^ Comments, good bad or indifferent, are always welcome. I hope this is good.  
  


> **Chapter 6 - The Waking Time**  
  
  
  
----- Ron -----   
  
Late evening. The fire in the common room is burning down, the flames flickering in wild shadows and lights across the walls. Harry went up to bed earlier to try to get some sleep.   
  
I wish I could join him but I can't. I just can't.   
  
Hermione sits by the fire, her quill moving endlessly across pages of figures. The twins and Lee offered to help her earlier but she turned them down. Now, hours later when only the two of us are still up, she's sitting there with her free hand clenched in her hair, tugging at it as though she might pull it out by handfulls as she mutters to herself.   
  
I haven't told her about Draco. I probably should, but she's so busy with her own work... I don't want to add to it.   
  
She crumples up a sheet of parchment and tosses it into the fire, the flames flaring for a moment as they devour it. I don't know how she can sit there for hours on end doing that work. I tried to catch up on some reading earlier but I'm so tired the words blur and twist in front of my eyes.   
  
The quiet scratch of Hermione's quill is a soothing sort of sound. I tilt my head back in my chair. Maybe I can just close my eyes... just for a minute...   
  
I don't know how much later it is, it feels like only a second, when the sound of a book hitting the ground and the rustle of a flurry of papers jerks me up again. Hermione, her face screwed up as though she's about to cry, sweeps an arm across the small table beside her chair, sending books and inkwell crashing to the ground in a thunderous mess.   
  
"Hermione?" I'm blinking, wondering if I'm dreaming or not.   
  
"Bloody hell!" She has handfuls of her hair in both fists, pushing it back from her face, and now she *is* crying, the tears wet and shining on her cheeks in the light of the fire. Her breath stutters in her throat. "I can't do this, I just can't *do* it! Why won't it work?" She covers her face with her hands, her sobs exhausted and angry.   
  
/Go talk to Granger./ His voice, haunting me. And maybe I've been too blind to see the answers.   
  
/I'm trying to *help*... this is all of us.../   
  
I take a breath and push myself up from the chair. Hermione, hiccuping miserably, doesn't look up until I sink down beside her and put a light hand on her knee. "'Mione?"   
  
She wipes at her eyes, trying to get herself back under control. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Ron. I'm just so tired..."   
  
I'm breathing but I can't seem to feel it. Everything feels leaden and I hear my own voice as though it's coming from someone else's throat. "Hermione... I think we need to talk."   
  
  
  
----- Draco -----   
  
/At the top of the stairs is a locked room, my secret chamber.../   
  
It's a song, I think. Except that I can't recall what the tune was or where I heard it. Or if I heard it. It seems ironically appropriate, though, and I whisper the words to myself in the darkness, letting them hiss soft from my lips as they chase through the back corridors of my mind.   
  
The moonlight streaming through the window is weak, pale and thready, barely a crescent in the sky. The classroom is silent, the shadowy shapes of the desks strange and different in the night.   
  
I twist the cauldron before me, the dark water cupped in its silver depths rippling faintly in a series of circles that shiver out from the center. It's a trapping, really. All of it, just trappings, window dressings, nothing more.   
  
But right now it makes it easier. It assures me of getting the results I want.   
  
For a moment I can feel the shiver down my spine, the tiny tingle of something like fear. I exhale slowly, letting the sensation rush out with my breath.   
  
/Behind this door is my other self.../   
  
The first prick of the knife tip against my wrist gives me pause and I have to take another breath, steadying the hand that holds the blade. Now is not the time for weakness. Now is not the time for second thoughts.   
  
I open my eyes to the shadows and press, feeling the sting as the metal parts skin and blood wells up in long shallow lines across my arm. I'm no artist but I know this pattern well, and line by curved line I trace it across my skin.   
  
/Immobile, inert.../ the words breath across my mind.   
  
"Not any more," I whisper back and the cool water engulfs my arm, dark and soothing as it washes the blood from my flesh. My eyes are open but the classroom around me has faded away into the night. There is a laugh, something giddy and ecstatic and just on the verge of hysteric, lodged deep in my chest. "Nothing is static. Everything... *everything* is falling apart."   
  
  
  
----- Harry -----   
  
He was dreaming again.   
  
Lucid dreaming, where reality and nightmares mixed and he couldn't tell one from the other any more. The empty late night halls of Hogwarts stretched on endlessly before him, twisting and turning and looping back... he couldn't recall the way. Or where he was going. But he had to get there, he had to get there soon, before Filch or Mrs. Norris caught him.   
  
The flagstones were cold beneath his bare feet and he couldn't remember where he had lost his slippers.   
  
Shivering, he turned another corner to face another stretch of corridor. They all looked the same... how long had he been wandering? He started to turn back, wondering if he could retrace his steps.   
  
"I wouldn't try to do that," a quiet voice said.   
  
Startled, Harry whirled, his teeth gritted, but it wasn't the gleeful face of Filch that met his own. Torchlight glittered off of the lenses in wire rimmed glasses, bright in the dimmness and Harry gasped.   
  
The smile was just like his own, a little lopsided. One hand brushed back a disarrayed tumble of black hair from the smooth forehead, leaving it just as rumpled looking as before. "That's the problem, you see," the man said softly. "We can't go back. Not any of us."   
  
Harry couldn't breath, his lungs locked tight and hard in his chest. "Dad?" It was a thready whisper, thin and high as the voice of a small boy.   
  
"James!" The hiss carried through the hall, hoarse and urgent. Harry looked, catching sight of a boy he didn't know, sandy hair and a thin boned, pale face. "James, would you hurry up?"   
  
"Coming, Moony!" When he looked back it was into dark eyes, on a level with his own, in a face that could have been his twin. The boy grinned and for one moment perception twisted and Harry knew he was looking at himself from the younger James' eyes, the light falling on thicker glasses and the hint of a scar. "It'll be alright," he heard himself say. "Just... be yourself. Be who *you* think you should be."   
  
"Dad!" But his cry was swallowed in the silence as the whole of it whirled away, washed in dark crashing waves that buffeted him, fierce and cold as they sucked him below the surface of the lake to sink, dropping, with the taunting laughter of the merfolk in his ears. Harry struggled, thrashing, his lungs burning.   
  
A hand reached out and caught his own, the grip hard and tight. Harry glimpsed pale flesh, gleaming in the dark, before the darkness reared up and engulfed him utterly.   
  
  
  
_Quotes from last chapter:  
  
Narrator: Can a person die from insomnia?  
  
-- Fight Club_  
  
  
  


   [1]: http://www.digitalmidnight.net/index2.html



	7. Standing in the Doorway

**Unique Snowflakes by BlackRose, 2001**  
[BlackRose's Page][1]  
  


> **Chapter 7 - Standing in the Doorway**  
  
  
  
----- Ron -----   
  
"You can't help, Ron," she tells me firmly. She's wiped her eyes and scrubbed at her cheeks; she still looks like she's been crying but she doesn't look like she's going to start again. She looks worn and tired and resigned. "There's nothing you can help with."   
  
"Don't tell me that," I snap back. The fire has burned down to warm glowing coals, the common room a space of shadows and darkness with us in the solitary pool of light and warmth. I shift, crossing one foot beneath the other as I sit on the floor beside Hermione's chair. "There has to be something."   
  
But she's already shaking her head. "No. You've got other things to do."   
  
I'm frustrated and tired. I just want to hit something. Which draws me back to my other worry. "What do we do about Draco?" I ask. I had told her what had happened; she took it rather well, all things considered.   
  
Hermione looks at me steadily, the shadows making her older and more somber by the glow of the coals. "Nothing," she tells me softly and I can feel the cold of the darkness at my back sink across my skin with the firm finality in her voice. "It's already too late for that."   
  
  
  
----- Draco -----   
  
It's done. It's done, and there's no going back now.   
  
Everyone looks different in sleep. When the conscious mind relaxes the masks drop away and all of the things we keep hidden in the daylight rise to the surface. Sleep is the little death - every evening we die and are reborn again, resurrected in our own image.   
  
In sleep, we stand at the doorway between life and death, beginning and end. The crucible of change.   
  
At rest, he abandons all of the little things he's taken to himself over the years. All the strengths, all the facades. What is left is the center of who he is - innocence. He sleeps the sleep of a child, even the artificial trappings of familiarity stripped away. Without the frame of his glasses to bracket it his face is softer, rounder, dark lashes thick against the curve of his cheeks.   
  
Innocent Harry. Sleep makes you safe, keeps you wrapped in your blankets of comfortable oblivion. But not any longer. Time to wake up now.   
  
He cheek is warm to my fingertips. The fall of that dark hair is thick and soft to the touch and my fingertips stray of their own volition to brush the smoother skin of a pale scar, tracing it down to brush at the curve of his brow. "Wake up," I whisper softly. "Wake up, Potter. It's time to be reborn."   
  
  
  
----- Harry -----   
  
Waking was like coming up from a deep darkness, velvet soft and rich, and he didn't want to. He'd had enough of dreams, enough of class, enough of being tired. Sleep - really restful sleep - was a treat and he didn't want to give it up, clinging stubbornly like a child with a sweet in its grasp. He fumbled, pushing away the hands that shook him and mumbling something even he couldn't understand. The hands returned, harder, shaking him roughly. "Wake up, Potter."   
  
The tendrils of sleep slipped through his clutching fingers to vanish into passing memory. That wasn't Ron's voice. That wasn't Ron's touch. And the hard surface beneath his cheek, digging into his hip, wasn't the soft comfort of his bed.   
  
Harry woke abruptly, one outflung hand groping automatically for the glasses which would bring the world around him into focus.   
  
"You won't find them," a familiar voice said, amusement shading the tone. "And you don't really need them. Lumos."   
  
The word brought light in its wake, gleaming from the tip of a wand. Harry squinted, trying to bring the revealed shapes into some sort of clearer focus. "Malfoy?"   
  
He couldn't make out all the details of the other boy's expression but Draco was smiling and that seemed, to Harry, to be cause enough for alarm. The circle of light the wand in Malfoy's hand cast around them illuminated stone - walls, floor, bare heavy flagstones worn smooth and dark with the age of centuries on them. Harry swallowed dryly, clenching his fists, but the crescents his nails pressed into his palms only felt sharply real and the dream, if dream it was, didn't fade away.   
  
Draco shook his head slowly, the smile fading. "This is no dream," he said quietly. It was a softer tone than his usual sharp sneer, cool and oddly somber. "You're really here."   
  
"Where's 'here'?" Harry demanded sharply. "What's going on?"   
  
"'Here' is home," Draco said simply. "My home."   
  
Anything else he might have said was lost as Harry surged forward, fists clenching in the fabric of Draco's robe. They tumbled back to the floor together, Draco's breath lost as his shoulders slammed hard against the stone, Harry's weight heavy against his chest. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Harry hissed, pinning the other boy down. "This isn't a game, Malfoy!"   
  
But Draco was laughing beneath him, breathless little gasps without humor. The sound made Harry cold. In the light of Draco's wand, still clutched in the hand Harry had forced to the ground, the other boy's face had the pallor of a corpse brought to a jerking parody of life.   
  
In the spell light, where the sleeve of his robe had fallen back, there were lines traced in crusted blood across pale skin and Harry found he couldn't draw breath past the tight contraction of his lungs.   
  
Draco's laughter trailed away, his eyes glittering. "No, Potter," he said sofly. "It's no game." He pulled his arm away and Harry, with a sort of horrified fascination, watched as the motion pulled open some of the cuts. Dark droplets of blood welled up, trailing down like tears from the cut lines that traced the hollow eyes of the skull with its twining serpent.   
  
"Draco..." Disbelief was cold and sour on his tongue and he barely caught himself against one palm, the stone scraping against his flesh as the other boy pushed him back.   
  
"And if it was a game," Draco said pleasantly, dusting off his robe, "then this would be checkmate."   
  
It was anger, surging up like bile in his throat, but beneath it he could feel the first bite of fear plucking with icy fingers at his heart. "I didn't think even *you* would sink this low," Harry spat hoarsely.   
  
Draco only smiled, pale lips curving gently upwards.   
  
Harry flinched back as the other boy lean in, slender face looming sharply into focus as Draco's low voice just reached his ears. "Where you are right now, Potter," he whisperd, his tone amused, "you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like. But you will," Draco added quietly. "When we're done, you'll *know*." He paused, drawing a soft breath. "And you'll thank me," he predicted softly.   
  
  
  
_Quotes from last chapter:  
  
  
  
Tyler Durden: Nothing is static. Everything is falling apart.   
  
-- Fight Club   
  
At the top of the stairs is a locked room  
My secret chamber that no outsider views  
For entry is forbidden, prohibited  
Behind this door is my other self  
Not a picture in a frame nor a fresh disguise  
But my other self  
Immobile, inert and sanguine  
  
  
-- Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Double Life _  
  
  
  


   [1]: http://www.digitalmidnight.net/index2.html



	8. Truth or Dare

**Unique Snowflakes by BlackRose, 2001**  
[BlackRose's Page][1]  
  


> **Chapter 8 - Truth or Dare**  
  
  
  
----- Harry -----   
  
"Why are you doing this?" he asked.   
  
Three days, as near as he could tell. Cut off, the room bare of window, his only sense of passing time came from the trays of food Draco brought him and he suspected the other boy didn't bring them at regular intervals. But it was the only reference he had and by that, it had been at least three days. And every time he asked it, not really daring to hope for an answer.   
  
"Why what?" Draco asked pleasantly. "Why bother to feed you?" It was the same every time, mocking answers that weren't really anything at all.   
  
Harry was starting to feel the desperation.   
  
"No," he snapped. "Why are you doing this? All of it?"   
  
Draco set the tray down, soup and water, and if nothing else it was in larger portions than what the Dursleys were want to give him when Harry was locked in his room over summers. The Malfoys, he thought humorlessly, weren't very experienced jailors.   
  
But that didn't mean the heavy door wasn't locked fast and Draco's pale eyes glinted up at him, laughing, though the other boy's tone was mild. "I'm not doing anything at all, Harry. Just bringing you a bite to eat. If you don't want it then I won't bother."   
  
"That's not what I meant!" Harry said hastily.   
  
Draco smiled. There was something chilling in the other boy's expression, something Harry didn't like at all. "Let me talk to your father," he tried. He didn't want to, not really, not in the slightest, but anything that might give him answers was better than nothing.   
  
Draco cocked his head to one side. Pushing to his feet, he nudged the tray closer to Harry with the tip of one toe. "Lucius isn't home right now," he said airily. "Just me. And you."   
  
"Where is he?" Harry demanded bitterly. "With Voldemort?"   
  
The other boy didn't flinch and there was something truly amused in his smile. "Eat your meal, Potter. I'll be back for the tray later." And with a rustle of robes and the heavy sound of the door and the lock upon the other side, he was gone.   
  
Cursing, Harry sank back down to the floor, his aching head pressed into his hands.   
  
---------------   
  
He had paced the length and breadth of the room, every inch of it from the door that would no more budge than the stones around it to the tiny curtained off toilet at the other end. Nothing. Not so much as a piece of string.   
  
In the long hours between Draco's visits, Harry spent much of the time sleeping. There wasn't really much else to do, and the constant squinting struggle to see past the immediate range of his unassisted vision made his eyes hurt and his head ache. Laying down, eyes closed, was easier.   
  
His dreams were restless, disjointed things. Hogwarts and muggle school, familiar faces always just behond his reach. Sometimes he thought he heard Hermione crying, other times it seemed it might be Ron. He could hear his name called but he could never find who was calling him. And always, he woke to the same hard stones and the same room, alone in the silence.   
  
---------------   
  
On the fourth day, he made the mistake of loosing his temper.   
  
Draco had come, bearing the usual tray, the door swinging shut behind him without the help of hands. "Why?" Harry had demanded, as he always did, and Draco had said nothing.   
  
Harry, angry and beyond caring, had grabbed the other boy's arm, the tray crashing to the ground in splashes of water and broth.   
  
With a strength Harry never would have credited him for Draco had simply balled his free fist and driven it into Harry's stomach without a word. It sent Harry crashing to the floor as the breath left him, his hands wrapped around his aching middle.   
  
"Why are you doing this?" he gasped again. The words came painful between his aching ribs, harsh and cold in his throat. "*Why*?"   
  
He didn't expect an answer. Not really. Which only made the other boy's smile all the worse; it was a benign expression, suited to the face of a carven saint. Not to the lips of a Death Eater.   
  
It shouldn't have warmed the pale eyes the way it did and Harry couldn't help shuddering.   
  
"Because I can," Draco told him mildly, his slender fingers ruffling Harry's hair in an affectionate gesture before Harry could flinch back. "Because you're nothing. Nobody." He leaned down, the whisper quietly conspiritorial, as though he confided a vast secret. "You're not a beautiful and unique snowflake, Harry. You're nothing miraculous." He smiled, sweetly, pressing his forehead to the other boy's, his hands catching Harry when he could have jerked away. "You're *crap*," Draco whispered, the crude word bitten off with a feral grin. "And until you know that - until you truly *know* it - you are useless."   
  
"Draco..." His own voice wavered, breathless, in the slim space between their faces. The other boy's slim fingers were strong, holding him fast.   
  
"Shhh, Harry." Soft and sibilant, like the hiss of parsel tongue on both their lips. "Hush now." Draco released him, abruptly, stepping back. In his pale eyes Harry could see only his own reflection. "You want answers, Harry? You want to know the truth? You have to forget everything you know, everything you think you know. That's where the truth lies."   
  
"Stop it," Harry grated. "Damn it, Malfoy..." But Draco raised a pale finger to his own lips, shushing Harry gently, the quiet grace of the gesture beneath the glitter of eyes he couldn't read at a distance stilling the voice in his throat.   
  
"You really want truth, Harry?" Draco asked quietly and Harry, throat dry beneath that gaze, could only nod.   
  
"Alright." A hand reached into the depths of a pocket, withdrawing the supple length of a wand, and Harry felt his breath still in his throat. A pale hand pointed it at him, the gesture almost negligent, like an afterthought of motion and no glimmer of emotion changed the other boy's eyes or the solemn line of his mouth. "Truth, Harry."   
  
There were truth spells to unlock the tongue, to strip a mind of secrets and knowledge and lay them all bare. It was the only thing Harry could think of as he struggled up, reaching. "Draco..."   
  
Draco smiled, the motion faint and bittersweet. "Truth," he whispered, soft as a prayer, before drawing breath for the spell.   
  
"Crucio!"   
  
  
  
_Quotes from last chapter:  
  
  
  
Tyler Durden: Where you are right now, you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like.   
  
Narrator: Every evening I died and every evening I was born again. Resurrected.   
  
-- Fight Club _  
  
  
  


   [1]: http://www.digitalmidnight.net/index2.html



	9. Questions

**Unique Snowflakes by BlackRose, 2001**  
[BlackRose's Page][1]  
  


> **Chapter 9 - Questions**  
  
  
  
The end may be in sight! One more part, I think. v_v I'll try to get it out without any huge delays since this is the angsty bit and I hate leaving cliffhangers laying around.   
  
----- Draco -----   
  
It's a very simple game, really. When he stops screaming, I stop the pain. Cause and reaction. Very simple.   
  
He's stronger then he credits himself for.   
  
The beauty of the cruciatus curse, they told us once in class, is that it doesn't leave any physical traces. No blood loss. No deformity. No permanant nerve damage.   
  
It's all in the mind, you see.   
  
I still have to smile when I remember that. And Harry... Harry, I'm certain, remembers every word of it. He's been living it, vividly. For days, hours at a time. Stop and start. Stop and start again. He's cursed me with every word he can think of. Swore and screamed and finally, in the late hours of evening sometimes, cried. And always he asks, as though his own questions might take the place of the ones he seems to think I should be demanding of him. Over and over again, endless, trying to understand.   
  
When we started this game, he asked for truth. I've placed the answer in front of him. It's up to him to grasp it.   
  
He goes slack when I remove the curse, a limp and boneless puppet cut from its strings. Broken. He's so close to broken. But never quite. Not yet.   
  
I take a glass of water to him. There's blood on his face, bright red against his lips where he's bitten them. I dip my fingers in the water and gently wash the blood away.   
  
His eyes flutter open, huge without the framing shield of his glasses. He has to squint to focus on me. "Dr... co..."   
  
"Shh," I whisper. "Hush, now." I dip into the water again, clear droplets hanging heavy from my fingertips, and let them fall across his cracked lips where he can lap at them with desperate intensity.   
  
"...Why?" His voice is dry and hoarse from the screams, vocal chords tight and near ruin.   
  
"I've told you, Harry," I repeat patiently. He always asks and I make a point to answer. "Because I can."   
  
His lips twist, fresh blood welling up. There are tears of helpless anger sparkling on his dark lashes, every word he utters an ordeal. "Why... not... kill me?"   
  
"That wouldn't serve any purpose," I tell him. "*This* serves a purpose."   
  
So very angry. It's the rage that fuels him, that keeps him strong. Anger and unadulterated stubborness, his voice cracking across the infuriated cry. "Why?"   
  
So close and not quite. So very close... but never quite right. I smile and lift the glass, tipping a swallow of the water into my mouth.   
  
Bending, I catch his chin. He doesn't have the strength to jerk away but his lips, when I press mine to them, are held tightly shut. I twist, driving my thumb into the junction of his jaw right were the bones come together, and force his mouth open.   
  
His breath is coming in little whining gasps as he struggles. I seal my lips to his and let the water flow, from my mouth to his and across his parched tongue. He tastes of dust and dryness and the bitter tang of pain and fear.   
  
He tastes of innocence.   
  
'Why?', he always asks. In the silence of his mouth beneath mine I can breath the answer - 'because you're letting me'.   
  
He jerks away as much as he can when I let him go, and if his dry throat were not so desperate for the water I'm sure he would make a point of spitting it in my face. He flinches from my fingertips. I stroke the pad of my thumb across the scar on his forehead, feeling the warmth of it, smooth and heated. He isn't bound but he can barely raise his head, much less push me away. It frightens him. There's so much fear there.   
  
I draw my hands back. "We're going to stop, now," I tell him quietly. "You need rest." There's so much anger in his answering glare. I smile and indulgently ruffle his hair, the strands soft to the touch. "Get some sleep."   
  
And then I leave him, in the darkness, with the ghosts of answers howling soundless around him as he puts his head back down and lets the tears fall.   
  
----- Harry -----   
  
Sleeping was almost worse then waking.   
  
The pain hounded him in dreams like something fierce and full of teeth, nipping at his heels. In sleep, he couldn't mask it or push it aside.   
  
And in sleep he could hear the cries.   
  
He knew them now, from night after night. Knew them as well as he did his own exhausted tears which chased him into sleep each evening. In his dreams they echoed, haunting - Hermione's sobs, ragged and muffled, and the deeper sounds of Ron's pain interspersed with violent helpless anger. And somewhere, within the dreams, he knew it for what it was - reality, the frigid touch of fear and warning. Somewhere, it was real. And somewhere, somehow, it was his fault.   
  
"Why", he had asked, endlessly. "Why are you doing this" and "What does Voldemort want" and finally, when he had no breath left and the pain stripped away thought it was just "Why" - why not end it, why do it at all, why, why, why.   
  
Draco's answer, in waking, was always the same. "Because I can, Harry."   
  
"Why?" Harry screamed into the depths of his restless dreams. "WHY?"   
  
But only the echoes of his own voice came back to him, mocking and hollow.   
  
His dreams had no substance any more. No shape. Nothing but formless grey across which he ran, forever, haunted by cries and the ghosts of pain. Dreams were no escape any more and he slipped from them to waking and back again a dozen times a night, his mind no longer sure which was which.   
  
He was, he thought dimly at times, waiting in the morning for Malfoy to arrive or in the evening when the other boy had left him alone once more, going to go mad. Stark, raving mad.   
  
Lost in the darkness, too tired to run from the pain or the sound of distant cries, he wondered if he already was.   
  
"Are what, Harry?"   
  
"Mad," he replied automatically, only then realizing that it was another voice than his own which had spoken.   
  
And then, without transition, Draco was there, black robes tucked neat about his feet as the other boy dropped down beside Harry to the grey ground. "Madness is a very subjective description, really," he offered mildly.   
  
"Are you going to torture my dreams, too?" Harry asked dully, with the distant uncaring of dreams.   
  
"How do you know you're dreaming?" Draco replied.   
  
Harry started to gesture around to the formless grey around them, only to find that it had become stone floor and walls once more, wavering like the heat images rising from summer pavement. "I don't," he admitted at last.   
  
"Good answer," Draco told him, smiling slightly. The expression wasn't as frightening in dreams as the mockingly cold one he wore during the day. "Very good, Harry."   
  
Harry lay back against the stone, letting it press familiar and comforting against his shoulders. They sat in silence for awhile, time slipping away in bursts and starts each time he blinked. "Why?" he asked at last, resignedly.   
  
"Why," Draco repeated, scoffing. "Potter.... no imagination. Why, indeed. Who?"   
  
That wasn't the way it was supposed to go. That wasn't the answer Draco always gave. "Who?" Harry asked sharply, looking up.   
  
Draco, in jeans and a plain black t-shirt, looking like any other English boy walking the streets of a muggle town, looked down at him with amusement. "Who, Potter. Who, what, when, where, why and how. The basics of grammar. They taught us that, you know."   
  
Could your heart pound in a dream? Harry pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the flutter there beneath his palm. "Who?" he asked softly, slowly, the word falling strange from his lips.   
  
Pale eyes narrowed to slits and Harry realized dimly that he could see them perfectly, even without his glasses. "Everyone," Draco answered, his voice a breath.   
  
"What?" Harry asked desperately, grasping at the next word.   
  
Draco's smile was enigmatic. "Truths," he replied. "And that's enough for now."   
  
"No!" Harry's hand, when he reached out, grasped the soft fabric of a velvet dress robe. Draco paused, tugging his arm away, and for one moment their hands touched and clasped, palm to palm, warm and solid beneath Harry's fingers.   
  
"When?" Harry whispered hoarsely.   
  
"Who, what, and when," Draco echoed softly. When he tilted his head pale hair slid across his forehead. His hand slipped away from Harry's, reaching up, and Harry stood his ground as one slender fingertip pressed lightly across his lips. The other boy leaned in, his words exhaled on warm gusts of breath across Harry's cheek. "Tell me, Harry... if you were to wake up at a different time and in a different place... would you wake up as a different person?"   
  
"I..." But he couldn't continue. Draco's lips closed over his own, firm and burning hot, and Harry could only gasp, his mouth opening beneath the other boy's. And then Draco's hands were on his shoulders, pushing, and somewhere there was an edge and he was falling across it, tumbling down, and there was only darkness.   
  
--------   
  
_Quotes from last chapter:   
  
Tyler Durden: You have to forget everything you know, everything you think you know -- about life, about friendship, about you and me.   
  
Tyler Durden: You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake.   
  
Tyler Durden: You have to know that someday, you will die. Until you know that, you are useless.   
  
-- Fight Club_

  
  


   [1]: http://www.digitalmidnight.net/index2.html



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